Audio: Indonesian rainforests for sale and bat calls of the Amazon

This episode of the Mongabay Newscast takes a look at the first installment of our new investigative series, “Indonesia for Sale,” and features the sounds of Amazonian bats.

Mongabay’s Indonesia-based editor Phil Jacobson joins the Newscast to tell us all about “Indonesia for Sale” and the first piece in the series, “The palm oil fiefdom.”

We also speak with Adrià López-Baucells, a PhD student in bat ecology who has conducted acoustic studies of bats in the central Amazon for the past several years. In this Field Notes segment, López-Baucells plays some of the recordings he used to study the effects of Amazon forest fragmentation on bat foraging behavior.

This episode of the Mongabay Newscast takes a look at our new investigative series, “Indonesia for Sale,” and also features a new acoustic study of Amazonian bats.

We recently published the first installment of a new investigative series Mongabay is doing in collaboration with The Gecko Project. The series is called “Indonesia For Sale,” and the first article looks at the land deals — and the powerful politicians and businessmen behind them — that paved the way for the explosion of industrial agriculture Indonesia has seen in recent decades.

Then we speak with Adrià López-Baucells, a PhD student in bat ecology and conservation whose acoustic studies of bats in the central Amazon document the effects of forest fragmentation on bat foraging behavior. In this Field Notes segment, López-Baucells plays some of the recordings and explains how these recordings have led to new species being found in the central Amazon for the first time.

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Indonesia’s Tanjung Puting National Park contains one of the the largest and most concentrated populations of orangutans left in the wild, but the area has been heavily targeted for its ramin and ironwood trees. Photo courtesy of Tom Johnson for The Gecko Project.